Leak reveals Nintendo is going to fix one of the Switch’s biggest problems

Nintendo had an absolutely stellar showing at E3 this year, announcing new entries in the Kirby, Yoshi and Metroid Prime franchises while getting every Switch owner on the planet excited about Super Mario Odyssey. But as excited as we are for the upcoming slate of games coming to the Switch, we’re just as anxious about the features and functionality that Nintendo refuses to commit to.

One of the questions that Nintendo has been asked repeatedly since the launch of the Switch is whether or not Switch owners will ever be able to transfer their save data. As it stands, save data can’t be moved off of a Switch console, but Nintendo of America head Reggie Fils-Aime has indicated that transfers are something the company is looking into. Now, leaked developer documents are backing up his claim.

This week, a 4chan user leaked what was purported to be the software development kit for the Nintendo Switch. NeoGAF user Atheerios spent some time looking through all of the folders and discovered a few interesting tidbits along the way. First and foremost, it looks like Reggie was serious about save data transfers, although there doesn’t appear to be a timetable for its release:

In the future, we plan to provide a feature to transfer account save data among multiple consoles. As a result, there is the possibility that user accounts with uninitialized account save data will be added. Note that your design must work without issue, even in this case.

Providing the leak is legitimate, it sounds like it’s only a matter of time until save data transfers make their way to the Switch. Atheerios also uncovered another upcoming feature called ‘Guest Login’:

We are considering a feature in the future (tentative name: Guest Login) to access existing network service account information without linking to a user account. This feature would allow temporary access to the network service account linked to the Nintendo Account by logging in to the Nintendo Account within the application. This feature would, for example, make it possible to upload a character you have raised as online data and then use that data on a friend’s NX (without creating a user account).

We do not plan to provide this feature for the NX launch.

For all intents and purposes, the Switch is an incomplete console. That’s not to say that it’s a disaster — quite the opposite. But now that the console has launched and a wide variety of games are in the pipeline, it’s time to focus on bringing the console up to speed with the rest of the industry.